Inspired by Painting the Modern Garden, the exhibition at the Royal Academy earlier this year, the gift of a book on iris from a friend on my birthday, and some wonderful flowers in Tuscany, I decided to make an iris bed between the greengage trees in the glade beside the meadow.
The bed gets plenty of sun from early morning to mid-afternoon. Digging it out and removing roots of perennial weeds took ages but the hard work was interspersed with dipping into books and catalogues to decide what to plant and where to go for them. Woottens of Wenhaston provided Jane Phillips, Souvenir de Mme Gaudichan and iris germanica. Peter Beales Roses had a lovely dwarf bearded iris called Hocus Pocus and in Diss I found four pots of an iris germanica named Black Stallion. I plan to plant iris reticulata in amongst these to get some early blooms.
the garden at The Old Brewhouse 